Quantifying the Sustainability of Water Availability for the Water‐Food‐Energy‐Ecosystem Nexus in the Niger River Basin

Abstract

Water, food, energy, and the ecosystems they depend on interact with each other in highly complex and interlinked ways. These interdependencies can be traced particularly well in the context of a river basin, which is delineated by hydrological boundaries. The interactions are shaped by humans interacting with nature, and as such, a river basin can be characterized as a complex, coupled socioecological system. The Niger River Basin in West Africa is such a system, where water infrastructure development to meet growing water, food, and energy demands may threaten a productive and vulnerable basin ecosystem. These dynamic interactions remain poorly understood. Trade‐off analyses between different sectors and at different spatial scales are needed to support solution‐oriented policy analysis, particularly in transboundary basins. This study assesses the impact of climate and human/anthropogenic changes on the water, energy, food, and ecosystem sectors and characterizes the resulting trade‐offs through a set of generic metrics related to the sustainability of water availability. Results suggest that dam development can mitigate negative impacts from climate change on hydropower generation and also on ecosystem health to some extent.

A semi-qualitative approach to the operationalization of the Food–Environment–Energy–Water (FE2W) Nexus concept for infrastructure planning: a case study of the Niger Basin

“…Streamflow time series recorded at 27 hydrometric stations were obtained from the NBA. Initial model parameters were obtained from Yang et al (2018). Further calibration was done by manually adjusting the curve number, percolation fraction to the deep aquifer, the percentage of wetland and reach bottom hydraulic conductivity.…”

Quantifying and linking Sustainable Land-water-energy-food nexus: A perspective of sustainable livelihoods in Gidabo Watershed, East African Rift Valley

“…In this paper, we used weighting model (WM) concept to combine the weight of LWEF nexus and livelihoods indicators indices selected from literature as explained in Table and 2. This model helps to determine an index system that could evaluate LWEF system to associate with sustainable livelihoods using weights of individual indicator which helps to develop composite indicator value and the resulting ranking (Yang et al, 2018). There are studies conducted on exploring WEF nexus sustainability (Mabhaudhi et al, 2019;Shahzad et al, 2017;Yang et al, 2018).…”

Exploring the Need for Developing Impact-Based Forecasting in West Africa

“…In addition, climate change induced extreme weather conditions are expected to significantly affect crop production in the region (Sultan and Gaetani, 2016;Ibn Musah et al, 2018). Changing climate is also expected to cause a substantial drop in hydropower production in West Africa (Yang et al, 2018;Falchetta et al, 2019) and increase the risk of infectious disease outbreaks (Bell et al, 2018;Thomson et al, 2018).…”